I can’t condone violence, but perhaps a space laser on her brow? 
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I think a long time ago he probably did. He got his start camping out and reporting on the Waco stand off, and off course was there because of an anti-government, pro-Karesh, conspiratorial perspective. It’s hard to think even that, with as under the radar for most people as that subculture was, and the lack of pathways for monetization, was motivated by grift
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Would it though? She’d just use social media as she always has done. The problem is the response, or lack of it, and even then the lack of impact that has.
The problem is everywhere, covid, vaccines, moon landings, flat earth, contrails, weather, fitness and diet and so on. We are seriously on a slope to the bottom
Trust in knowledge, being able to accept you were wrong, and critical thinking have all but gone in large sections of society. Belief in social media is the new religion.
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One worrying thing, and this is something all of us should be aware of, is that we’re not immune to it either. Our minds often have the same biases, and this is something we should be wary about.
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Yes, absolutely. I’m guilty of looking at all sorts of diet related stuff and supplementation. My motivation for doing so is sound, but the path is a proper windy one filled with bullshit. Sifting through it is difficult, and im sure ive made some poor decisions as a result. However i do not promote my thoughts all over the web.
This is key. Modern education involves children regurgitating established facts, not using reasoning and challenging existing thoughts.
The underlying ideology is simple: ensure that people parrot what they are told, and keep them too stupid to challenge you.
It’s the neoliberal way!
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I’d argue the opposite: Modern education encourages ‘independent’ thought far too early rather than first establishing through rigorous learning and regurgitation of established facts a strong shared knowledge from which reasoned argument can then be encouraged. (It’s the neoliberal way)
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I liked both of the above points as I think there’s truth in both.
When I was at Birmingham University in the early 1990s I got to know some American students who were doing a semester abroad. They were bright but they all struggled, largely due to the thing @cynicaloldgit describes. They were used to regurgitating back to their lecturers what they had been taught, whereas the British system (at that point at least) assumed you knew that. The issue, as a test of critical thinking, was what were you going to do with the information, how were you going to piece it together and apply it? It didn’t make sense to the American students, and they were disappointed to discover they were among the brightest at home, but it didn’t look like that in Birmingham.
That was probably my earliest direct experience with the dumbing down of neo-liberalism, although I didn’t know what it was. I just thought it was two different systems.
Anyhow, to the second point, @dalglish it is now much more prevalent at all ages, and the advent of social media has accelerated the tendency for individuals to assume they have expertise, without first having done very much in the way of formally learning. And it is happening way before University age.
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Yeah, my experience on the flip side - British educated then going to the US for university - was very similar.
The distinction I would draw is that there is difference between encouraging independent thought vs requiring students to have an understanding of a concept beyond being able to recall trivia. The latter is more basic and is where I see the US often fails. Americans will learn about Columbus with a focus on the dates, the names of the ships etc but not be able to describe much about the geopolitical environment that led to the exploration. I had lived here for maybe 15 years before I realized that most Americans think the voyage was about proving the world was not flat FFS!
My take, having worked in (university) education there for a decade, is this is more a reflection on their attitude towards testing - its importance, the need for objective standards and repeatability. The result of all of this is a preference for multi choice exams, something that makes exploring complex issues nearly impossible. And the way something is tested always impacts how it is taught.
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Example # 1,000,002 - if I don’t personally see or talk to someone who identifies themselves as FEMA it means they aren’t doing their job.
https://x.com/naomikowles/status/1844376107325538790?s=61&t=VxX1vHU3NOwwNhlbyICG-g
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Mother who believes in the existence of the Democratic Party hurricane machine says “do your own research” to a son who’s literally a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences
https://x.com/mikegrunwald/status/1844726177581126107?s=61&t=VxX1vHU3NOwwNhlbyICG-g
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So what you’re saying is… He did?
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Yeah but funded by the government so doesn’t count because if he mentioned the hurricane machine he would lose his funding. Says women describing the intricacies of academic funding mechanisms who has no ducking idea what she is talking about.
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The state government, which the last I checked, has been Republican since…1999?
Yeah damn those woke snowflakes!
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I appreciate research. I know how hard and consuming it is.
And weather (
) it be in 15th-century Italian history or the prevalence of Paul Pogba shirts amongst low-IQ people from greater Manchester, if it is done properly and rigorously, it demands respect.
Fuck these dumb cunts who walk amongst us. They shit me to tears.
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Paradoxically this us exactly what conspiracy theorists tell us to do.
“Dont believe the earth is a globe, use your own mind and observation. No curve is visible therefore it must be flat” So they willfully ignore historical evidence, experimental results, observation and even twist themselves into complete knots to justify that initial presumption. There is no learning, no openess to new infirnation or reasoning and so on.
It is the curse of populism. I dont know how you change it but the misinformation does need to be challenged and dismissed somehow. All of it.
Trump, MTG, Vance and so on should have their bullshit shut down immediately. It isnt done enough.
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Most people drastically underestimate the amount of fundamental knowledge that is needed before “thinking for yourself” is a productive approach for these sorts of issues.
At university by the time someone graduated with a bachelors we’d expect them to be able to break down a research paper to understand what it said, why it was done, what statistical approach did they use and why etc. But I would expect most to require a few more years of focused study to be able to understand where that single paper fit within the body of literature and what it meant for the field.
So what does that mean? Do you wonder whether supplementing vitamin D is good for your health? Well Im sorry, but you simply don’t have anywhere near the knowledge to determine that for yourself and so you’d better have a good heuristic for figuring out whose knowledge you can lean on to answer that question for you because even that blog you read (that gave you the answer you liked) is beyond your ability to determine if they are pointing you in the right direction or not.
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In a similar vein, having been interviewed as a subject matter expert by journalists and taken pains to get across some of the complexities, I was almost always appalled by the results. Oversimplification and distortion to the point of incoherence was the norm. It was never malice, just a matter of someone lacking the knowledge base to really understand, but nonetheless driven by the imperative to reduce the object of discussion down to a 500 word snapshot.
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My experience was a predetermined desire to write a certain story by someone with neither the willingness or ability to hear how what you were saying was inconsistent with that story. The interview existed simply as a mining expedition to get a couple of quotes they might be able to drop into the story they have already 80% written in their head.
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